INSIGHT2050 Academy – Professional Practitioners: Housing for All

Because of the COVID-19 virus, the housing seminar has been postponed. The likely new date will be the Spring of 2021.

Sponsored by MORPC and The Ohio State University Knowlton School Alumni Society

Five Session Schedule:  Fridays from 8 to 11 AM on September 27, October 4, 11, 18, and 25

Locations: MORPC offices and Homeport/Parsons Branch Columbus Metro Library and October 11 MORPC Sustainability Summit at the MORPC offices.

Registration fee:  $225

Website link:  https://getinsight2050.org/news-events/insight2050-academy/

Academy Overview

Insight2050 is a collaborative initiative designed to help our communities proactively plan for development and population growth over the next 30+ years that is expected to be dramatically different from the past. The prospect of growth of over 1 million new residents during this time has no historic comparison.  What is generally agreed is that past development patterns will not be adequate to accommodate this growth.

The Academies have been formed to provide intensive guidance, technical insights and opportunities for reimagining the future of Central Ohio by those individuals who are front and center at this historic place our community’s future.

The focus for this year’s Academy is “Housing for All”.  Recent research has demonstrated that Central Ohio has a growth-based housing supply shortfall. But it also is one of the most economically divided major cities in the US.  This divide is reflected in the availability of housing in general and in particular affordable housing.  Recognizing this challenge, public and private actors are now pledging significant financing and funding mechanisms to give momentum to this need.

This round of Academy sessions builds on previous rounds for elected public officials and community leaders and activists by engaging our community’s planners, architects and landscape architects. The 2050 challenge is what constitutes “smart growth” for us and what means will shape, guide and regulate this future state.  Our communities have begun to give serious consideration to the implications of change but the work is far from done.

This round of the Academy will engage the planning and design community by further raising their awareness, offer insights into the causes, and challenge them to contribute to developing new concepts and arguments for more inclusive and affordable housing for all.  By this engagement, individual practitioners will gain the insights, fresh paradigms and creative impulses critical to achieving a more sustainable, just and healthy Central Ohio.  The result will be a significant increase in the number of practitioners capable of meeting these challenges.

Learning Objectives

1. Overview & Data:  Gain a better appreciation of the forces and actors impacting access to affordable housing.
2. Leading innovators:  Appreciate initiatives in other communities that are tackling the affordable housing issue and consider how such innovations could apply to your practice.
3. Practice Implications:  In workshop fashion learn how to formulate creative solutions to a set of local problems defined from the prior sessions
4. Build confidence in taking on this challenge and become a knowledge leader
5. Expanding the expertise in this building type and create greater momentum to increase the supply and access to affordable housing
6. Synthesis:  Teams will present proposed responses and receive constructive critiques of their proposed solutions.

Application of Learning

Practitioners will gain confidence in their ability to pursue and undertake projects that include affordable housing components.  Collectively the Academy graduates will add significant capacity to our community’s ability to address this immediate and pressing issue.